


Armoured Hearts

by sanerontheinside



Category: Star Wars - All Media Types
Genre: GFY, Gen, Imperial Years, Lothal Rebellion, Medical stuff, Pre-Star Wars: A New Hope, Re-entry AU, Re-entry Universe - Flamethrower, Rogue One - Freeform, bacterial infection
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-02-26
Updated: 2017-02-26
Packaged: 2018-09-26 23:11:28
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,530
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/9928205
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/sanerontheinside/pseuds/sanerontheinside
Summary: Silver Greene's talent takes her to the Core Worlds, but her loyalties will always lie with home.





	

**Author's Note:**

  * For [norcumi](https://archiveofourown.org/users/norcumi/gifts), [peskylilcritter](https://archiveofourown.org/users/peskylilcritter/gifts), [flamethrower](https://archiveofourown.org/users/flamethrower/gifts).
  * Inspired by [Lost in the Echo Part II](https://archiveofourown.org/works/3958957) by [flamethrower](https://archiveofourown.org/users/flamethrower/pseuds/flamethrower). 



> Silver Greene is an original character created by flamethrower. Asha, quite unexpectedly, declared existence mid-write.

Silver Greene is not a stage name. 

She was born with a name that belongs on the stage and she’s known, since the beginning, that that is where she will go. She watches people, watches the minutest reactions, commits them to memory and dissects them in her mind. She can read the softest shifts and mimic the motions like second nature. In the language of touches and fleeting expressions and passing glances and soulful looks, she has the dictionary committed to memory, and nothing can challenge her knowledge of it. She can creep into someone’s mind, reading those shifts. She can choose what to telegraph, what to project, to recreate their likeness in herself. 

She’s going to the Core Worlds, to Alderaan. 

She’s going to be an actress. 

It’s exciting, this, exciting that she has a gift the Empire values. It’s more than _acting,_ it’s a way to give back to those she loves most. Whatever money she makes, it will go back to her family, her friends, to the people who raised her. It’ll pay for medical supplies, for food. If she can trade on her appearance and skill for their sake, she’ll do it in a heartbeat. 

Alderaan is a beautiful world. It is dignity and elegance and grace, and while the grey of Imperial oppression still bleeds out colour at the edges, Silver finds herself drawing a deep breath of air clear as the crystal mountain lakes, pure as the snow on its white mountains. Lothal is home, but Alderaan greets her with open arms, uncaring of who she is and where she’s from. It’s a welcome like the Empire would never give: those who determined her worthy of a scholarship and a Core World education had judged her appearance and her precisely mirrored mannerisms. 

Alderaan accepts her as she comes. Alderaan teaches her to be anyone and everyone. 

Alderaan also teaches her to play the politician. It’s an interesting school, this: with so many students from less privileged Empire worlds, they are given classes on politics, as well. Alderaan’s Academy of the Arts is perhaps unique in that they are very clear on the importance of where their students are from. _You have a voice in the Empire now, we are teaching you to speak for your own people._  It’s never expressly stated, but the role of diplomacy and etiquette is a subject of deep and frequent study. 

Acting gives her freedom, as it always has. It gives her the poise to walk into a room and claim, without words, that she belongs - and people always believe her. _We are teaching you to be safe,_ the Academy does not say. 

But then, Leia Organa is also a subject of frequent study, rising fast in her own political career. There is nothing _safe_ about her. 

What she doesn’t quite expect, though, is that outside the Academy, there is far less of this freedom. Oh, it should have been obvious, but the Academy schooling was built primarily on old plays, and some old Republic-era films that no one mentions, because according to one decree or another, most of them had been ‘destroyed’. In the archives, in the belly of the Academy’s library, there is a treasure trove of old film. This doesn’t prepare her for the limited set of roles the Empire has to offer. The opportunities are… monotone. Drab. Grey. Like the Empire itself. The movies all tell the same stories. 

She’s not doing this for its interest value, of course. She’s doing this for her family, for her people. The situation on Lothal is growing desperate, and Silver fights for them tooth and nail every chance she gets to speak. By now, her face is well-known, and her pleas have a chance of sparking outrage. Senator Organa speaks for Lothal, adding weight to her pleas before the Imperial Senate. 

It doesn’t help, not really. When Tarkin burns all their fields, Silver watches the triumphant holostream with a hand over her mouth and a breaking heart, but there are no tears in her eyes. The sense of drab inevitability is pervasive, it’s starting to settle in her bones. She still sends them what she can, funds relief efforts, raises money for the supplies they need. It’s not enough. 

But she suspends her projects all the same, first chance she gets. Silver’s name is well-known, well-liked, by now. She has some freedom by now to come and go as she sees fit, though she exercises it rarely. 

It’s another relief effort for Lothal, with the help of Princess Leia of Alderaan. Silver barely recognises her home from the scorched remains, almost chokes on the air that used to be cleaner, once. Leia Organa looks at her with sympathy and a steely determination that Silver has always respected. 

At every turn, they’re met with some Imp who seems to think they are outside protocol and procedure. It takes all of Silver’s training not to laugh behind Leia’s back while the Princess boldly passes through all their red tape with the single-mindedness of a gunship or a battering ram, but there are times when Silver’s fame and cajolery stand them in greater stead. In the end, Silver lands with her feet on the ground, vaccinating the children and immunocompromised who come to the relief tents while Leia angrily throws out those who come out of order, or to interfere. 

Leia Organa is a force of nature. 

But she’s also a rising power in the Senate, and eventually she is needed elsewhere. Silver embraces her before she leaves, feeling the hum of some greater power in her arms, thinking that this woman could bring the Empire to its knees with her words and her fire, and hoping that one day she’ll live to see it.   


 

* * *

 

The next few months are a bit of a haze. 

There’s the work. There’s so much to be done, it’s exhausting and almost mechanical. Then there’s the headache and the occasional numbness in her jaw. She doesn’t give it much thought at first—it’s something she’ll take care of back in Imperial medical facilities. She has a tooth that needs repair anyway. No sense in bothering overworked medics with already limited supplies and too many patients. She doesn’t want to take from those who need that care and those supplies far more than she does. 

Her mother would have told her she was being stupid. Her mother would have been right. 

One of the medics corners her in the hall and raises all hell before Silver gets any real idea of what’s going on. Then again, that’s more or less her fault, too, because she can’t quite pierce through the fog around her for long enough to understand what they’re saying, and why they sound so worried. 

They can’t do much for her here, not at this point. They take her to the Imperial base, where the officers in charge—the very same officers whom she’d talked into letting her and Princess Organa pass through with their supplies—claim not to know her. Petty revenge, she thinks, and wants to laugh, because what else is there to do when she’s practically delirious. But by now it hurts too much to do even that. 

For another few days it’s heat and pain and it won’t end. Then, suddenly, it’s gone. 

When she wakes in cool, pale light, in what is definitely a higher class of Imperial medical facility, Silver doesn’t quite know what to think. When Tarkin comes in to give her his best wishes for her health, she does her best to respond with her usual poise and grace, though she is completely bewildered. 

Everyone on Lothal knows what Tarkin is. Tarkin is a monster. Yet his timely appearance saved her life: she is in _his_ medbay, _the private medbay on his ship._  

Tarkin is astonishingly polite and gentle, with a twist to his smile that speaks of fondness and a whisper of regret. He regards her with with an air of wry indulgence. _We appreciate the work you’ve been doing,_ says the tilt of his head, the positively doting slant of his eyes and mouth, _to civilise the dangerous rebels. But you must understand, none of them are worth your life—_ this again with the regretful pinch to his lips and brow. 

Oh, and of course, what was she thinking, staying down there so long in such pitiable conditions, she should really be more careful. Why, his men almost thought her one of _them!_ But not to worry, Tarkin has _personally_ seen to the matter of those officers who were so _ungracious_ to her. 

“Do take better care of yourself, my dear,” Tarkin says. He adds, almost wistfully, “We look forward to seeing your new films.” 

When he leaves, Silver wants to laugh at the irony of it. She is, as it turns out, one of Tarkin’s favourite artists. She hates his very guts, and she’d never realised how hotly that burns within her until the moment he gives her that sharp, precise Imperial bow, and struts out of the room. 

She also has a moment’s perverse pleasure at the thought that he’s ‘seen to’ those ‘ungracious’ officers. It almost makes her sick. 

But the faint air of regret about his apologies and flatteries puzzles her—at least until she feels strong enough to get up and make her way to the ‘fresher. The sight that greets her in the mirror spells the end of an acting career.   


 

* * *

 

The Academy at Alderaan, much like Alderaan’s universities, is a place ripe for finding contacts in the Resistance. They’ve always treated it with caution, but at this precise moment, Silver does not care. 

She was returning from a project on Onderon, voicing one of those old documentaries that even she can smell the lies in. (She says nothing: those transparent lies were written by people of Onderon, and made it past the censors by sheer miracle. Actually, she’s rather appreciative of scripts that skirt the censors this way. Alderaan is much better at them, for the most part.) It’s with this in mind that she happens to (literally) run into an old friend. 

Asha is a writer. She is tall enough to make Wookie cracks about her own height, she wraps her friends in a tight embrace and plies them with spiked tea and spiced cookies. Everything about her is sweet and spicy and rich, and Imperial greys simply warp around to avoid her. The colours of her are deep and rich and they run hot, reds and oranges and golds that might seem brash on anyone else. They weave into her, and into anyone beside her, warming even the deepest chill. 

And Asha’s writing is rich with the most subversive spicy subtext to ever sneak under a censor’s eye. Truth be told, Silver wonders sometimes how Asha’s still alive. But Asha revels in it, revels in the risk, in the brash and open-faced lies she can get away with, with her smile and her Wookie-height. ‘It’s a story that focuses on family values,’ she says sweetly, of a story that—

Well, it’s not a lie. 

It’s family values, alright. It’s a gleeful, shameless satire. 

Asha’s large eyes go round when she sees Silver’s face. “What happened to you? A minor rebellion on Lothal?” 

“Of the bacterial sort,” Silver half-laughs. The scars are still fresh, pink and hot. They do look a bit like a brush with acid. That seems to be the popular tale that the HoloNet is running with these days. 

Her grief and guilt are still raw. Grief, because she can no longer speak for her people like she used to. The story of how disease ravages Lothal, of how it claimed even her, is certainly powerful; but while there’s some sympathy, the Empire still shrinks at the sight of her ruined face. 

Guilt, because it’s her fault, really. She should have at least realised something was wrong much sooner. She should have gone to the medics and asked for help. 

Asha shakes her head and throws an arm around Silver’s shoulders and takes her home, adds tea to the brandy and brings out her Gran’s old recipe book. By the end of the night, they’ve botched the dinner, made the cookies—that recipe somehow happened to be brandy-proof—and Asha is humming old war songs from her world under her breath. 

“We need to do something,” Silver mutters. 

“We’re doing everything we can, aren’t we?” Asha gives her a sharp look over a bitten cookie. “You haven’t been back to Alderaan in ages. If I know you, it’s because you’ve actually been busy, not floating around fancy parties with the elite.”

“That’s part of the job,” Silver points out, with a grimace that would never have been permitted in the diplomacy and etiquette courses. _You might consider not drinking in public at all._  

Asha laughs. Silver’s always loved that laugh, how deep it is and full of life. She loves how everything sweet hides something spicy in Asha, and even the cookies prickle lightly at her tongue. 

“I want to join the resistance,” Silver says. 

Asha coughs herself out of the laugh. “You—Silver that’s—that may not be the best idea.”

She shrugs. “Why not?” 

Asha suddenly looks sober as ever. She sets down the teacup, puts the cookie down on the edge of the saucer. “In case you hadn’t realised, which I somehow think you haven’t, you’re one of the best known actresses to ever step out of the Academy. And you know what it’s like, if you have any record of associating with the Rebels, you’re putting yourself at risk.” 

Silver gives Asha a hard glare at that. “And yourself?” 

Asha sighs, shrugs, and nibbles at the cookie again. “What about myself? I never leave the planet. I just send my scripts.” 

“Well, it doesn’t look like I’m going anywhere, like this,” Silver waves a hand at the ruined half of her face. “Not much use for anything less than perfection in the Empire’s stories, Asha. There are few exceptions.”

“Well, you still have your voice,” Asha points out. 

Not that voice-acting has a particularly large role in the Imperial film industry. It’s only in those documentaries few people ever watch. She’s only ever filmed from the right, now, when she does make her brief appearances. Silver stares at the table for a long moment. 

“Asha, the Rebellion can have my voice. At least they’ll take me with my face. I’d be more use to Lothal here than out there, where they’ll quietly bury me in films no one will ever see, and never listen to another word that leaves my mouth.”

Asha hums, long and low, and vents a gusty sigh. “You have a point.”   


 

* * *

 

Asha accompanies Silver to the Alliance base on Yavin IV. “Can’t let you go out there alone, can I? They need all the help they can get.” 

“Why, get another of your scripts back lately?” 

Asha has a peerless grimace. “Too highbrow. I need to take some time and _reconnect with the people._ ” 

Silver laughs so hard she cries. 

The Alliance finds work for them almost immediately. Silver somehow finds herself training Intelligence officers, learning slicing techniques alongside Asha, who has the rare talent of spooling out more letters per second than any human Silver has ever met. 

“You know,” Asha says one night, rubbing at her aching hands, “I wouldn’t mind finding a way to reconnect with the people.” 

“Like what, exactly?” Silver asks through a yawn, throwing her feet up on her bunk. 

“The only news reporting we get these days comes directly from the Empire, and they can tell us whatever lies they want. They said you were attacked on Lothal. They blamed an old factory meltdown on Rebel terrorists. The Alliance needs reporting of its own—we can’t even pass information from one cell to another without the fear of it being intercepted. What do you think?” 

Silver blinks, recrosses her ankles. “I suppose you don’t want to send them coded transmissions.” 

Out of the corner of her eye, she sees Asha shaking her head. 

“The more they intercept, the more likely they’ll crack the code, even the clever ones Cypher left us.” Asha pauses, squints at the dull light of their room. “What if it’s not obvious—not really news? Hiding in plain sight?”

That squint, Silver knows, is the inkling of an idea. She’s seen that look often enough, and the results have always been nothing short of brilliant. “Well if you’ve got ideas, I’m not asleep yet.” 

Slowly, with the almost audible snapping-together of thoughts, a near-feral grin appears on Asha’s face. “Remember that old show they used to run, Armoured Hearts or something? Republic-era.” 

“Uh, not really,” Silver sits up, resting one shoulder against the wall. “That was ages ago, I don’t think anyone would remember it.” 

“Exactly. The only surviving copies are in the Academy archives. We can rewrite the stories however we want, and no one will be the wiser.”

Silver shrugs. “Why?” 

“Well you have to do some work to adapt them to voice-only broadcast. But apart from that, they were always written to reflect the political situation at the time.” Asha looks up to see her friend shaking her head fondly. “What?”

“Asha, whatever you touch, it turns into satire.” 

“That was sort of the point of the original,” she sniffs, only mildly offended. (Gods know it’s true. She’s burned drafts and drafts before sending a significantly mellowed final edit to the censors.) 

“Oh, all right,” Silver sighs, swinging her feet to the floor and rocking back slightly. “I’ll bite. You want to rewrite an old Republic serial, Armoured Hearts, as an up-to-date news broadcast for the Alliance.” 

Asha nods eagerly. 

Silver turns her good eye to give her a long, dubious, assessing look. “Can we persuade them to send the archived footage here?” 

Asha must have been expecting stark refusal. She collapses backwards on her bunk and laughs heartily.   


 

* * *

 

The retelling of Armoured Hearts is an astonishing and almost immediate success. Asha scowls as she writes, glancing sideways at the most recent field reports that Command has approved for the general report. 

“If I had known soaps were so popular and lucrative,” Asha growls, “I’d have swallowed my pride and started writing for them years ago.”

Silver, unperturbed, is reading the script that will go live in an hour on the worn old couch across the narrow closet they’ve claimed as their workstation. “You mean journalism.”

“Thankless job.” 

“Not if you write what you believe in.” 

“I write what they give me,” Asha snaps back. 

A black mood, then. Silver huffs. “For the Rebellion,” she mutters, a reminder with a sour taste, given what they’d witnessed earlier that week. The whole mess surrounding Scarif had been prettied up for broadcast, but the better part of the base here on Yavin IV knew some gorier details. Asha had never been prone to outrage, never quick to anger, but Silver watched her as the vote was cast, watched her fume. 

The screen at Asha’s right splutters to life, ticks a few characters in Aurebesh. Never, not in all the time that they’ve been doing this, has Silver seen Asha look so horrified by a few simple words. Her face looks awful in the pale blue glow of the display. 

“Alderaan has been destroyed.” 

Asha’s voice is flat and hollow, so unlike the larger-than-life, glowing, radiant presence that Silver has lived and worked with for these last few years. She slowly rises from the (hard as rocks) couch, rubbing at her lower back, and comes around to stand behind her, reading the report over Asha’s quivering shoulder. 

Her heart twists at the thought of Senator Organa, who had been heading home at the end of the failed vote. And Leia, the fire of Alderaan, the hope of the Alliance, was she there too? 

Another moment ticks by before it occurs to her that, really, for too many years to count, Alderaan was home—both to her and to Asha. 

Silver sighs, lays one light hand on Asha’s shoulder and squeezes. “Finish that script. I’ll go find the brandy.” 

Asha doesn’t move. Silent tears slip down her face as she sits and stares at the keys in front of her, hands folded heavily in her lap. 

“You know,” Silver says, stopping with her hand hovering over the door controls, “it’s a funny thing, Armoured Hearts. That ‘soap’ survived the fall of the Republic, escaped the destruction of the Academy’s archives.” 

Asha turns slowly, the look on her face utterly heartbreaking. Silver automatically swallows the expression of mirrored grief that wants to form, but even so, her words come from a tight throat when she does speak. “Finish that last broadcast. We don’t have to do anything else to do tonight, just grieve and remember, and pray for miracles.” 

Asha blinks, sending more tears streaming down her face, then gives a jerky nod. She wipes the tracks away with shaking hands, and takes a breath, focusing on the keyboard again to complete the report on Scarif. 


End file.
